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In Goodbye Emmanuelle: Her Last Game of Death... Okay, that’s not the actual title, but I just can’t resist making a Bruceploitation joke. Technically Emmanuelle is a character in The Dragon Lives Again, even if she isn’t played by Sylvia Kristel there, so one could argue that Kristel is a Bruceploitation star by proxy. (No, the character does not kung fu fight in that movie, but does try to give somebody a sex-induced heart attack.) Normally this is the part where I go into a long-winded anecdote only tangentally related to the movie, but I’m just settling for Bruceploitation jokes this time. We’re having fun, right? Why is everybody leaving? Fine, I’ll talk about the actual movie.
This entry finds Emmanuelle and her husband living the good life in the Seychelles. One day when they’re gettin’ it on on the beach, she makes eye contact with a hunky director cruising by shirtless on a boat while filming something or other, and becomes hopelessly attracted to him. This causes Emmanuelle to reexamine her lifestyle choices and creates tension in her marriage. Will their (free) love survive the presence of this hunky shirtless director? Or is it doomed to fail like his shirt presumably was at keeping him clothed? I guess the biggest problem I have with this one is that it has the characters behave fundamentally differently than the previous movies. The second entry especially defines the relationship between Emmanuelle and her husband as being open, honest and encouraging of each others’ extracurricular activities. Having them suddenly grow jealous, possessive and monogamously inclined feels like a betrayal of who these characters are. Now obviously people can change and experience different emotions, but there needs to be a convincing instigating factor to sell this change, and this director fella, hunky as he is, ain’t it. He’s just a big pile of nothing, and it’s hard to see why Emmanuelle would go for him when his competition is the significantly more charismatic Umberto Orsini.
The featurette on the Kino Blu-ray has Kristel and others talking about this movie taking a more intellectual approach, and I don’t think the movie is better off, as what we get here is pretty rote stuff. In contrast, while the second movie is an almost plotless progression of softcore sex scenes, those help you feel the dynamic of their relationship much better than this one tells you about it. (The second movie is also substantially better smut, as this one has fewer and less imaginative sex scenes.) The movie does share some of the non-skeevy pleasures of the previous movies, in that it’s handsomely shot and takes place in an attractive setting, meaning it’s not unpleasant to veg out to even if the actual proceedings aren’t terribly interesting. Yet Seychelles is essentially a vacation spot here, as the movie fails to mine it for the kind of erotic charge that Bangkok and Hong Kong provided in the previous entries. (I guess that makes it less problematic, and but also less interesting. These movies are all about white people having sexual adventures in exotic locales, but this one seems least eager to own up to it.) There’s also the music by Serge Gainsbourg, who I imagine brought some of the same energy to composing this as Michael Scott did in that one episode when he wore the one braid in his hair after a Caribbean vacation. His main theme, replete with seductively breathy vocals by Jane Birkin, did get stuck in my head for the rest of the day, so I guess I liked it.
As you can deduce from the title, this marked the last entry where Kristel played the lead role. I don’t know how good the later entries are supposed to be, but I see one of them is directed by Walerian Borowczyk, so perhaps further exploration is warranted. (She admits she took cameos in the later entries because she needed money, which is refreshing in its honesty.) Now, aside from the resolution of her relationship troubles, the movie also waves goodbye to her in fairly literal terms. Or rather, she waves to us, multiple times, in slow motion. I don’t know, I thought it was cute.
Goodbye Emmanuelle (Letterier, 1977)
In Goodbye Emmanuelle: Her Last Game of Death... Okay, that’s not the actual title, but I just can’t resist making a Bruceploitation joke. Technically Emmanuelle is a character in The Dragon Lives Again, even if she isn’t played by Sylvia Kristel there, so one could argue that Kristel is a Bruceploitation star by proxy. (No, the character does not kung fu fight in that movie, but does try to give somebody a sex-induced heart attack.) Normally this is the part where I go into a long-winded anecdote only tangentally related to the movie, but I’m just settling for Bruceploitation jokes this time. We’re having fun, right? Why is everybody leaving? Fine, I’ll talk about the actual movie.
This entry finds Emmanuelle and her husband living the good life in the Seychelles. One day when they’re gettin’ it on on the beach, she makes eye contact with a hunky director cruising by shirtless on a boat while filming something or other, and becomes hopelessly attracted to him. This causes Emmanuelle to reexamine her lifestyle choices and creates tension in her marriage. Will their (free) love survive the presence of this hunky shirtless director? Or is it doomed to fail like his shirt presumably was at keeping him clothed? I guess the biggest problem I have with this one is that it has the characters behave fundamentally differently than the previous movies. The second entry especially defines the relationship between Emmanuelle and her husband as being open, honest and encouraging of each others’ extracurricular activities. Having them suddenly grow jealous, possessive and monogamously inclined feels like a betrayal of who these characters are. Now obviously people can change and experience different emotions, but there needs to be a convincing instigating factor to sell this change, and this director fella, hunky as he is, ain’t it. He’s just a big pile of nothing, and it’s hard to see why Emmanuelle would go for him when his competition is the significantly more charismatic Umberto Orsini.
The featurette on the Kino Blu-ray has Kristel and others talking about this movie taking a more intellectual approach, and I don’t think the movie is better off, as what we get here is pretty rote stuff. In contrast, while the second movie is an almost plotless progression of softcore sex scenes, those help you feel the dynamic of their relationship much better than this one tells you about it. (The second movie is also substantially better smut, as this one has fewer and less imaginative sex scenes.) The movie does share some of the non-skeevy pleasures of the previous movies, in that it’s handsomely shot and takes place in an attractive setting, meaning it’s not unpleasant to veg out to even if the actual proceedings aren’t terribly interesting. Yet Seychelles is essentially a vacation spot here, as the movie fails to mine it for the kind of erotic charge that Bangkok and Hong Kong provided in the previous entries. (I guess that makes it less problematic, and but also less interesting. These movies are all about white people having sexual adventures in exotic locales, but this one seems least eager to own up to it.) There’s also the music by Serge Gainsbourg, who I imagine brought some of the same energy to composing this as Michael Scott did in that one episode when he wore the one braid in his hair after a Caribbean vacation. His main theme, replete with seductively breathy vocals by Jane Birkin, did get stuck in my head for the rest of the day, so I guess I liked it.
As you can deduce from the title, this marked the last entry where Kristel played the lead role. I don’t know how good the later entries are supposed to be, but I see one of them is directed by Walerian Borowczyk, so perhaps further exploration is warranted. (She admits she took cameos in the later entries because she needed money, which is refreshing in its honesty.) Now, aside from the resolution of her relationship troubles, the movie also waves goodbye to her in fairly literal terms. Or rather, she waves to us, multiple times, in slow motion. I don’t know, I thought it was cute.